In the eighties, when I was a young wannabe game designer, my models and inspirations were the Future Pastimes team, authors of Cosmic Encounter and of several other games I often played, such as Dune, Darkover or Quirks. I often quoted one of them, Peter Olotka, who, when asked why the alien powers in Cosmic Encounter were so unbalanced, answered “why should they? Balance is boring, life is unfair.” Only years later did I realize that, while this elegant and provocative statement was far from wrong, it was only part of the truth. If alien powers in Cosmic Encounter do not need to be balanced, it’s mostly because the game balance relies on two powerful “gyroscopic” self balancing systems, chaotic complexity and alliances. There are others, and I’ll try to discuss the main ones in this article.

The first of this mechanism is why Cosmic Encounter is best known among games : chaos. Chaos is complexity, but complexity created not by depth but by the interweaving and interaction of numerous more or less autonomous systems. To put it simply, the more unbalanced elements, systems and mechanisms there are in a game, the less likely it is that all of them will favor the same player. It can sound paradoxical to state that chaos is an equilibrium factor, but it is. History has shown that the simplest, cleanest and best ordered systems were usually not the fairest ones. Most collectible card games use chaos as a balancing tool, and specifically the first, most open and most varied of them, Magic the Gathering.

Diplomacy players all admit that the starting positions of the central powers – and most of all, if I remember well, that of Italy – is much weaker than that of peripheral states such as Russia. Never mind. Players know about it, take it in account when playing, are more likely to ally with Italy, or are less wary of her. In the end, the balance is generated not by the initial set up but by the alliances and dynamics of the game. Formal alliances and support like in Diplomacy or Cosmic Encounter are even not necessary, and this self-balancing effect can also work informally. In all games for more than two players with some fighting, or even just some player interaction, it is often possible to bash the perceived leader – up to a certain limit at least, because every game must come to an end at some point. Even in a peaceful, family fare and politically correct game like Settlers of Catan, all other players often spontaneously agree not to trade with the leading one, and are more likely to build their roads near his in an attempt to block his development.

The characters in Citadels are not more balanced than the aliens in Cosmic Encounter. Much depends on the moment in the game, and on the game situation, but two characters, the Merchant and the Architect, are usually more powerful. It doesn’t hinder the game, it even adds to its dynamic. One often wants to choose the Merchant or Architect, but one also knows that they are more often targeted by the Thief and the Assassin. In my upcoming card game Masquerade, the King gets 3 gold every round, while the Queen gets only 2… but that’s also why the Queen usually stays (or is it sits?) longer on the throne.

In collectable card games such as Magic the Gathering, in deckbuilding card games like Dominion, and even in drafting games like Seven Wonders, players build their deck or their hand of cards by themselves. It doesn’t necessarily make the games more balanced than the preconstructed ones of, say Smash Up or Summoner Wars. It makes the players themselves answerable for the game’s balance, which adds to the game’s depth and makes the designer’s job much easier. On the other hand, cards still have to be kept more or less balanced in strength and cost, or the same ones will always be selected by the players. Of course, the designer can this time rely on auctions, a very simple way to have the game and the players take care of costs balance.

Gyroscopic Stabilizer

There are two kinds of equilibrium in physics, stable and unstable. A stable equilibrium moves back to its original position when it is pushed a bit, while an unstable one immediately crumbles. A game’s balance must be stable enough so that a player cannot take the lead at once and be unreachable. The reason why Monopoly is a bad game is its unstable balance, due to the “rich gets richer” mechanism, which makes for a very unstable balance. This can be prevented by implementing “gyroscopic stabilizers”, systems which automatically detect the disequelebriums and alleviate them. The most usual one is to allow the poorest, last in the race or otherwise losing player to play first, or chose his card first, like I did in Lost Temple. The thief in Settlers of Catan, invariably used to neutralize the leader’s cities, does the same. Choam Charity in Cosmic Encounter younger brother, Dune. While these systems restore some balance between the players’ assets and positions, others restore balance between the costs of the various game elements, like in Small World, when a race that is not bought by players becomes cheaper. Balance must however be unstable enough to make the players’ choices challenging, and to bring the game to an end. A good example of a clever game that might be a bit too well stabilized – at least for me – is Antoine Bauza’s Tokaido.

Balance is not necessarily boring for the players. Two players strategy games, no matter whether symmetrical or not, need to be well balanced, meaning to give both players almost the same odds of winning, to be really challenging. Balance is mostly boring, tiring and time consuming for the game designer, because it needs lots of work, fine tuning and testing, when the designer would often prefer to start something new. I realized this a few weeks ago, when writing my article about faction games. I’ve played a few games of Summoner Wars, and enjoyed them a lot, but I can’t imagine myself designing something like this, balancing all the factions, adding one strength point here, removing one cost point there, and testing all the possible combinations. It’s so much easier, and it feels so much satisfying, to have the game balance everything by itself.

I rather think that Monopoly has unstable but very slow evolving balance. Once it starts to favor a player, there’s nothing to, he starts winning, very slowly, and there’s nothing to do. It could hve been acceptable if it didn’t last for hours…

Market forces, such as auctions, are also a way to dynamically balance game resources. See also the way races are picked in Small World or cards are bought in Through the Ages and the commodity market in Power Grid (and Crude).

Yes indeed ! I completely forgot all the systems dealing with money, such as auctions (and I’ve never played Through the Ages and Crude, but I ought to have thought of auctions, Small World and Power Grid).
So, many thanks for pointing it, I just added two sentences in the text about auctions and Small World.

Very nice article and I completely agree with you. Exploring the balance in the game is exciting and fun for me. It gives me a kind of feeling that I’m designing a game in a game.
At the same time, however, those games are sometime hard for naive players. Catan or Citadels are OK for very naive player in most of the time, but auction games can become a disaster. What is the difference? Clarity of the balance?

I think you clarified something for me that I always found mystifying. Avalon Hill’s “Origins of World War II” was necessarily imbalanced, almost ridiculously so. We (as young players) tended to simply play to win, “every man for himself,” with the result that the German player always won by brute force. It is only in retrospect that I realize that the weaker players must adopt the first priority of cooperating to prevent Germany from winning, and then, in the course of negotiating among the allies and making late-game moves, striving to out-score the other players. In a way, “Origins” might have been the first semi-cooperative game, except that we didn’t appreciate it at the time. The self-balancing mechanism of that game was too subtle and too dependent on the expertise of the players. We just thought it was broken.

Another way to look at #cosmciencounter is from the individual point of view: When you are a player in a Cosmic Encounter game you feel like you are walking a tightrope – now there’s balance that is not boring!